Learning in medical and veterinary clinical skills frequently utilizes an apprenticeship model. The apprenticeship model has been a standard method for clinical education for decades and is aimed at providing hands-on experience to a learner. It is hoped learners encounter enough situations to ensure they become competent surgeons or medical practitioners. However, the standard apprenticeship model is limited in providing enough exposure, due to unavailability of varied cases to enhance skills, and in humans the unavailability of standardized patients who are willing to risk being treated by a learner. The standard apprenticeship model is also constrained by a specialization of a teacher or a mentor. Complications, arising out of these limitations, ultimately makes this a haphazard way to learn, and puts learners and patients at a disadvantage.
Simulation education offers valuable learning experiences that can be scheduled and observed; unlike in real life where clinical learning opportunities may not present when a student is available. Learners address critical thinking and hands-on skills, including knowledge-in-action, procedures, decision-making, and effective communication.
As clinical simulation in healthcare education continues to evolve, the use of standardized participants to improve skills, clinical care, and communication embodies this paradigmatic shift for training. High fidelity simulation has and will continue to play an important role in healthcare and veterinary care simulation, but in humans cannot take the place of direct human interaction.
Standardized participants with a wearable simulating device provide healthcare students and clinicians the opportunity to interact with a real person providing the most realistic simulation possible. The standardized participants are carefully recruited and trained to take on the characteristics of a real patient thereby affording the student an opportunity to learn and to be evaluated on learned skills in a simulated clinical environment.